Investments In Game Companies Were Down In 2015 But eSports And VR The Rising Stars

The gaming industry has seen investments fall in the year 2015 according to a new report.

According to a report by CB Insights who provided the information exclusively to GamesBeat, the year 2015 saw venture capitalist firms invest $1.02 billion in 216 different companies. This is very low compared to 2014’s numbers of $2.43 billion in 217 game companies. Digging a bit into the numbers, the average investment per company went down to $4.7 million compared to the previous year figure of $11.2 million per company. But, it is worth noting that 2014 consisted of two big and unusual investments which were the $542 million investment into Magic Leap and $500 million for the Korean CJ Games and if you take out those two amounts, the remaining investments in 2014 amount to $1.4 billion which is still a big amount and the drop is nevertheless huge.

But, while these investment numbers are on thing, eSports and Virtual Reality seem to be the new thing that have brought new investments into the gaming industry. The companies which were included in the analysis by CB Insights included gaming companies, hardware manufacturers, eSports companies, and Virtual Reality companies catered specifically towards gaming. The VR industry is set to have its first run in the current year and many startups have received investments in anticipation of the release of the VR headsets in 2016 with many of them working on creating experiences for the new technology.

Coming towards eSports, there are many companies working on supporting the various areas of eSports including actual content and tournaments, coaching and training and most importantly, the broadcast of tournaments and other events.

Classifying by countries, the U.S. remains the most dominant nation with the most venture capitalists investing in game companies, investing in more than 100 different companies every year since 2011. The other promising nation is Asia which saw growth in numbers in the year 2014 but 2015 saw a dip for Asia as other regions overtake the land of the Asian by numbers.

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